


Deleted Scene: Mass Card

by paladin_cleric_mage



Series: My Heroes Had the Heart [6]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladin_cleric_mage/pseuds/paladin_cleric_mage
Summary: Friday, February 22nd, 1985, c.9:00PMCorresponds to chapter 55.





	Deleted Scene: Mass Card

At 9:00, when he should have been exiting the funeral home, Dustin arrives home and trudges through the living room and down the hall, ignoring his mother's apprehensive greeting. He slams his bedroom door, a move that releases only a fraction of the dynamite rage that has him shivering. In addition to rage, he shakes from the adrenaline of fighting his ex-best friends, along with roughing it through the freezing cold, which clings to him after his long, lonely walk. At once his body aches and bites. His stomach hurts from screaming, and also from the hunger he won't acknowledge.

Flopping onto his bed, he leans back against pillows Steve laid on just over a week ago, Dustin takes the prayer card out of his shirt pocket. He isn't expecting much, but what he reads is so offensive that he cannot contain his disgust. Again he shakes apart, shouting and thrashing on his bed. He wants to shred the card to bits with his teeth, but he is compelled to keep this physical totem, a testament to how little Steve's parents cared.

Would that Billy could step out of jail for a night to put  _them_ to rest. In return, Dustin would put that bastard out of his misery. El couldn't bring back Steve, but she could have killed Billy.

The realization looses whatever sanity he has left. His mother rushes into the room.

* * *

Mrs. Henderson finds the prayer card on the floor. Her son punches his pillow, screams himself raw. Careful not to get too close, yet undeterred by his fit, she sits on the edge of the bed and turns the card over in her hand. Although she read the card earlier at the wake and kept one for herself, she reads it again. Maybe there's a different prayer on this one, a prayer that's less... impersonal.

Having lost her husband years ago, Claudia understands the blast of shock loss causes. All balance is gone, the ground a concept far below, rather than a solid thing to stand on. Still, how can two parents fail to put themselves together long enough to pick a prayer that at least gives a nod to Steve's soft impressionability, his incessant optimism?

It's no wonder that her son has been overwrought by anger. It's simply justifiable.

> _Steven Isaac Gregory Harrington_
> 
> _(1967-1985)_
> 
> OUR Father, who art in heaven,
> 
> Hallowed be thy Name.
> 
> Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done,
> 
> On earth as it is in heaven.
> 
> Give us this day our daily bread.
> 
> And forgive us our trespasses,
> 
> As we forgive those who trespass against us.
> 
> And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.
> 
> For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
> 
> for ever and ever.
> 
> Amen.


End file.
